Love

I like making fun of random people I pass by on campus. It's easy to make fun of people you don't know and who you'll probably never see or think of again. Sometimes I'm accidentally judgmental. Sometimes I'm judgmental on purpose. 
     I have a lot of people who love me. I have a lot of good friends who care about me, but they don't all know me very well. There are some people who know me who don't really like me, I'm sure, and these are the people who know me even less than my not-super-close friends know me.
     I have a few best friends. They know a lot about me that most people don't know. They know that sometimes I can be cranky. They know that I'm not always selfless. They know that I tend to be boy crazy, a little bit lazy, and I'm sometimes a perfectionist. They know a lot of my flaws. But they love me anyway! They love me even more than my not-so-close friends do who only mostly see my good side. 
     My family knows me even better than my best friends do. They've lived with me for most of my life. They've fought with me, they've tried to teach me to share and love and work. They've seen me be overly angry and really sad. They've experienced hard things with me, they've forgiven me for hurting them. They know most of my weaknesses. And even though they know all these things, they still love me! They love me even more than my best friends do! They love me unconditionally. I don't think there's anything I could do to make them not love me. 
     I know myself. I know myself better than any of my friends know me, better than my family knows me. I know that sometimes I fall short of what I'm trying to accomplish. It's easy to be hard on myself. But I still love me! I love the gifts I've been blessed with, I love how my mind works, I love who I am. Despite all my flaws.
     God knows me perfectly. He knows things about me I don't even know. He knows all the things my acquaintances and friends know, He knows all that my family knows about me, He knows what I know, and He knows things about me that I haven't even discovered yet. He knows better than anyone my faults. He knows where I've faltered in the past, and what I'll have problems with in the future. He knows me so completely, and yet He still loves me completely! He loves me more than anyone, ever. His love is perfect for me. 
     I don't understand love. But I have come to better understand that the more you get to know someone, the more you love them. I have friends who, when I first met them, I really didn't think we'd get along. Some of them I didn't know if I wanted to try to get along. But, what always happens is, when I make an effort to get to really know them, I end up loving them! For all a person's imperfections, they still have something about them that makes it impossible to not love them. 
     In the process of getting to truly know someone, you usually get hurt. You learn things that could make you unhappy. But to really know someone you have to make it through these things. And then you love them. And each time you learn something new, each pleasant moment you experience or each battle you fight, you love that someone more and more. 
     I've been told that you can't claim to hate a piece of music until you've completely mastered it and know every part to it. A lot of times people say they hate a piece of music when they first start learning it, simply because they can't play it and it frustrates them. It doesn't sound good at first when you're stumbling to read and find notes. It's easy to just give up on these pieces to learn something easier. But if everyone did this, we'd miss out on a lot of great works! The more time you spend with a piece of music--learning about the composer, studying the form, practicing the notes and expression--the more beautiful it becomes, and you almost feel as if you own it. Maybe you do own it. I dare you to spend time making something beautiful and then try to hate it.
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Knowledge is power. And power is love.